It’s been over 10 years since social media first graced the world with its presence. Marketers and business owners alike have battled long and hard to develop social media insights to better navigate the world of social engagement.

Building community, extending organic reach, creating a holistic brand, scheduling, time management—all of these are issues at the top of social media marketers’ minds.

With that being said, let’s breakdown the social media landscape with tips from the following thought leaders so that you can master the social media space in your industry.

Expand your reach by building your community organically.

Our first tip comes from Neil Patel, who recommends expanding organic reach via social media in his article, “How to Improve Your Facebook’s Organic Reach”. From engaging with your community by hosting Q&A sessions to sharing behind-the-scenes content of you and your team, you can build community organically without having to put so much of your focus and resources into paid advertising.

Optimizing your organic reach isn’t rocket science. By using Facebook to analyze your fans, you can gain insights to grow your reach. For example, through Facebook Insights, I found that the majority of my fans visit my nutrition page at 1 p.m. For that reason, you’ll see most of the updates taking place around 1 p.m.—Neil Patel

Post holistically with your audience always in mind.

Our second tip comes from Jordan Kretchmer, who elaborates on the importance of developing a holistic approach—benefitting brands in a huge way. Through holistic outreach, you can infuse your content with relevancy and value that create a cyclical opportunity that not only attracts more visitors to your brand but ultimately keeps and delights past customers to continuously use your products or services.

Social media marketing no longer lives exclusively on social media. It needs to exist everywhere a consumer is interacting with your brand, whether on your website, in store, or in your advertising campaigns...it's important to start thinking holistically about your social engagement strategy. Social networks were just the beginning.—Jordan Kretchmer

Be present and engaging for your audience and beyond.

Building a brand on a single social platform can be a bit of a process. There are many steps to creating and distributing content to the right audience at the right time. And let’s not forget about the necessary extra media like marketing videos and interactive banners.

It’s easy to see how social media timing and distribution can become overwhelming and something you could spend hours maintaining. With these factors, along with a modern website and the time commitment towards maintaining it, finding time to manage your social media has a huge impact on the performance of the content you are distributing to these social platforms.

There is a way to be on social media and not become a slave to it...I don’t believe that you should be spending your ENTIRE life in social media or that your social media should be controlling your life...if you’re going to be on social media, it should be to be a value to other people...teach people something that you’ve had to struggle with a figure out and you’ve got the short cut.—Chalene Johnson

Cultivate your community locally from your social media to your website.

There’s a big difference between the manner in which individuals find you on social media, and how your content is viewed by Google. Content that is hosted directly from your personal or company website is favored by Google, but it’s not seen by social networks. Our last tip comes from Jay Baer, who explores the importance of hosting social communities in a local fashion. This helps in many ways to maintain and grow your social community, which you can see how to in his article, “It’s Time to Own Your Social Community”.

The advantages of an owned social community are numerous, including enhanced loyalty, direct sales, and business intelligence and market research. Further...the cost to operate an owned social community can be quite reasonable compared to trying to pull the same brand levers in a leased community.—Jay Baer

Although social media has only been around for a short amount of time, it has already made an impact that will last a lifetime. Explore the numerous social media engagement and social community building options for yourself and own your social space. Know and understand that each of these “social actions” that you take (even if they seem small) will have a big impact on your social performance and overall brand engagement. However, your process and your content have a direct effect on whether or not that impact will lead towards positive marketing success.

Direct Images Interactive is an inbound marketing agency specializing in high-impact video production and online graphic design. We are centrally located between Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose. Come see us at The Gate in San Leandro, a thriving tech-hub of innovators. What can we do for you?